Forum Post: America doesn't understand this
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 20, 2011, 2:30 a.m. EST by capitalistnyc
(1)
from Brooklyn, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I just returned from lower Manhattan speaking to many of the people involved in the OWS protests. I went there tonight with the intention of personally understanding what the people involved would like to see as a resolve. I have been excited to see this movement progress and would love to see positive change as a result of this american action. I met many people in zuccati park who had realistic, positive goals. I also met a few who would like to see our country rot into anarchy. I do not deny that our system is flawed, perhaps even broken, but america is not a wash and this movement is bound to loose momentum if the goals are not created that america as a whole can agree to move forward with.
I propose the following simple list of demands:
End all corporate contributions to political campaigns at the local to national level.
Restrict private contributions to political campaigns to $1000 per individual.
Restrict elected officials from holding private positions, and investing during their time in office and for the following 5 years after leaving office.
All communications from lobbyist, PAC, special interest groups to elected officials must be through predetermined communication platform and made available to the public.
Create laws that carry loss of elected positions and prison for breaking any of the above laws.
If the above changes would be made to our election process and these addition restrictions placed on those in office, any long term demands could be reached in time by fairly electing representatives who are best suited to serve the people and will honorable serve the people while in office The immediate benefit creating these demands is that the only people who would object to these 5 simple demands are those who currently abuse and corrupt our system. 250,000,000 people will march to see these demands met....and they will be met
America understands exactly what we're doing.
An immediate 5 year moratorium on all lobbying nationwide. Might be a free speech problem, but these days 'lobbyists' aren't citizens demanding access, lobbyists are 'investment firms' selling politicians. Thus simply having a 5 year 'Lobbyist Holiday' would solve the problem. Your solution would just drag out the same problem we have now by the time the smoke cleared the lobbyists would fine loopholes. Soon the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT will ban OWS protesting, so why can't we sponsor rhetoric to ban lobbying immediately??
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But the sad fact there are no simple push-button solutions, since day-one in the USA lawmaking has been like sausage making, very ugly process.
There is NO way to control the lobbyists they simple have too much power, for no other reason than most are ex-senators themselves, the revolving door. Grandfathering in a few would only make the minority MORE powerful, this is why its essential to shutdown all WASH-DC lobbying as an industry that rules DC. More laws cannot fix the problem, as they have shown us NO law will be enforced, as all law enforcement is selective and only applied to the 99% by the 1%. Just like today where congress exempts itself from all law that it writes, the only way out is to shutdown all these parasitic fronts ran by the political class (1%) to extort money.
There are simple push button solutions, focus on debt reduction for the 99%. Focus on debt reduction via the lowering of interest rate charges.
The USA debt outstanding is $200 Trillion dollars, historical interest rates are 2-5%, the payment on this debt is as big as the GDP. The FED is keeping interest rates low for now, but not for long.
The CDS insurance outstanding is $600 TRILLION, but no claim has ever been paid by wall-st nor will it ever, this is why AIG was covered, and LEHMAN went down and GOLDMAN was covered, wall-st sold the world policy's to cover their bad debt, but the problem is claims are never paid, only covered by governments, and now the governments are broke, and only a few country's have gold.
China will come out near top, as Switzerland, and Singapore, ... Canada also will do fine. USA, Italy, Greece, ... France, UK are screwed.
Playing fault game? This has all been a 40 years slow play, post WWII USA won, but like a power ran by the GUN-THUGS ( think NUKE ) using borrowed money to buy bullets, eventually such governments collapse.
But this is all based on interest rate charges. Just who does everybody owe this money to?
In 1962 congress was forced to write a little book called "what is money", I suggest you all find that book on the internet. It was a congressional study on the history of 'money'.
People loan money based on the ROI, or return-on-investment. If they feel their money is 100% safe they'll accept low ROI, if they fear the loss of their money the ROI must be high.
Today people still trust the USA that the T-bill and T-bond will not collapse, so uncle sam can borrow Trillions from the Chinese and pay low interest rates. The chinese would only buy gold if gold paid interest, sadly it does not.
Since post WWII the USA forced the entire world to base currency ( money ) the dollar, backed by fractional gold, post 1972 the gold clause was removed, and since then MONEY is ONLY based on the confidence of the US government. To sum the current situation the WORLD is a BUCKET OF SHIT, as the confidence of the US government by the world is now ZERO.
Truly rich people keep their 'money' wealth diversified, there still are AAA ( good money ) like the swiss-franc, singapore dollar, so there are still places for money to be safe, after that its gold.
The Federal-Reserve created in 1917 in the dark of night is in power to pull 'money' out of its ass, they then LOAN this money to the US government who turns around sells T-Bond and T-BILLS. People who buy these t-bonds and t-bills get INTEREST from the US government deemed safe.
Since 1990's the US public no longer saves money, but that's ok, as the chinese sell us shit from walmart and the chinese turn around and buy t-bills.
But to answer your question who do you pay the interest to? Its to the US treasury, but they get the DOLLARS for free from the federal reserve. Given that since 1972 the money is NOT backed by gold, and the fact that now every year the FEDERAL RESERVED pull's 10's of trillions out of its ass this means that over time the DOLLAR becomes diluted and real value approaches ZERO relative to say gold or real money like SGD or CHF.
The USA has been playing this hustle on the world since WWII, which of course the USA ( bush, harriman, hearst, ford ) brought on. Post WWI they created the CIA, forced the world to trade OIL, DRUGS, and BLOOD in US dollars. To this day any country that doesn't sell its OIL in US Dollars get's bombed.
The INTEREST is paid to the US treasury which is BATF & secret-service, and several other very powerful gun toting groups, oh and the IRS.
But most interesting is that the US government pay's NOTHING for this money that it gets from the federal-reserve, its all off the books secret money called the 'back-door'.
I would like to say more about BATF aka bureau of alcohol, tabacco, and firearm: Very interesting that their part of treasury, as Gun's are a right, and not really taxed, but post 1930's the US government started 'taxing' machine-guns and put guns under treasury, these MONEY people are the best armed in the US government second of DOE ( energy ) which protects the NUCLEAR power plants and NUKES in general.
Buy the WHOLE DEAL GUNS & NUKES is always about ONE thing, protecting the almighty US dollar the NUKE is kept to the worlds HEAD to keep them accepting DOLLAR's, they then have to buy dollars and pay interest to the US government, not unlike EVERYONE on earth having to give on to CAESAR. The CIA keeps the whole game going. Brilliant.
Justifiable Debt Restructure J.D.R., MUST be put into law. That's all that has to happen. http://occupynews.blogspot.com/2011/11/justifiable-debt-restructure-would.html
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There are NO 'push button' solutions, that is rush-limbaugh rhetoric,
The fact is USA is broke, the dollar is worthless, the rich too are getting robbed by wall-st the entire US economy is collapsing,
Civil War is coming, and there are no simple solutions, for 50+ years the parasites of the USA consumed 90% of the goods with 5% of the population, but in the last 30 years they did it with borrowed money, now CHINA say's "NO MORE" its game over for the USA and its all going down. The good is the cops paycheck will bounce, and then it will get real interesting.
99% of OWS people are just lemmings reacting to the unknown, this collapse has been coming since the 1970's as post vietnam war the entire US economy has been on triage, and now its game-over
Not sure I understand #3. So you finally get a "regular guy" elected to Congress for a 2-year stint. Then, he's restricted from holding a private position (maybe I don't understand what you mean by that), or from investing, for 5 years?
7 years of no investment is a pretty heavy load to put on someone.
Why not just subject them to the same insider trading restrictions that they had while in office?
If you make public service so punitive you're not going to get quality candidates. Got to have some balance.
DO NOT DEMAND IT - DO IT
We have a large number of great, well thought out, COMPLICATED ideas that will require a huge amount of "selling" and “explanation" and will garner GREAT OPPOSITION.
We need to be realistic & pick an issue that is simple – and that is proven popular -
that 83% of Americans already agree on -
that 76% of Republicans already agree on -
that 56% of TP already agree on -
that will bring together the people in OWS with the people outside of OWS.
Everybody wins!
Our only goal should be to pass a constitutional amendment to counter Supreme Court decisions Citizens United (2010) & Buckley v. Valeo (1976), that enable unlimited amounts of anonymous money to flood into our political system.
“Corporations and organizations are not a persons & have no personhood rights”
and
“money is not free speech”.
We don’t have to explain or persuade people to accept our position – we have to persuade them to ACT based on their own position. Pursuing this goal will prove to the world that we, at OWS, are a serious realistic Movement, with serious realistic goals. Achieving this goal will make virtually every other goal – jobs, taxes, infrastructure, Medicare – much easier to achieve –
by disarming our greatest enemy – GREED.
THE SUCCESS STORY OF THE AMENDING PROCESS The Prohibition movement started as a disjointed effort by conservative teetotalers who thought the consumption of alcohol was immoral. They ransacked saloons and garnered press coverage here and there for a few years. Then they began to gain support from the liberals because many considered alcohol partially responsible for spousal and child abuse, among other social ills. This odd alliance, after many years of failing to influence change consistently across jurisdictions, decided to concentrate on one issue nationally—a constitutional amendment. They pressured all politicians on every level to sign a pledge to support the amendment. Any who did not, they defeated easily at the ballot box since they controlled a huge number of liberal, and conservative and independent swing votes in every election. By being a single-issue constituency attacking from all sides of the political spectrum, they very quickly amassed enough votes (2/3) to pass the amendment in Congress. And, within just 17 months, they were successful in getting ¾ of the state legislatures to ratify the constitutional amendment into law. (Others were ratified even faster: Eight —took less than a year. The 26th, granting 18-year-olds the right to vote, took just 99 days.)
If they could tie the left and right into a success -
If Ohio won. If Arizona won. If Maine won. If Mississippi won - WHY CAN'T WE ??????????
I feel that we should stay with this simple text to overturn CU:
”corporations are not people” and “money is not free speech”
for four simple reasons and one – not so simple:
1
83% of Americans have already opposed CU in the ABC/Washington post poll and the above
IS THEIR POSITION ALREADY.
2
We don’t have to work to convince people on the validity of our position.
3
Simple is almost always better.
4
This simple Amendment is REQUIRED to overturn CU.
And all other electoral reform can be passed through the normal legislative process. 5
OWS and these pages are chock full of ( mostly ) excellent ideas to improve our country.
All of them have strong advocates – and some have strong opposition.
None of them has been “pre-approved” by 83% of Americans !
Pursuing this goal – without additional specifics is exactly what Americans want.
What do we want? Look at that almost endless list of demands – goals - aims.
Tax the rich. End the Fed. Jobs for all, Medicare for all. So easy to state! Can you imagine how hard it would be to formulate a “sales pitch” for any of these to convince your Republican friends to vote for any of them?
83% of Americans have ALREADY “voted” against CU. And 76% of the Rs did too!
All we have to do ask Americans is to pressure their representatives – by letters - emails – petitions.
Wanna take your family on vacation?
Convince your 7 year old to go to Mt Rushmore.
Then try to convince her to go to Disneyland.
Prioritizing this goal will introduce us to the world – not as a bunch of hippie radical anarchist socialist commie rabblerousers – but as a responsible, mature movement that is fighting for exactly what America wants.
Ohio won. Arizona won. Maine won. Mississippi won -
I feel that using their tactics, and the tactics of the NRA, the AARP an the TP – who all represent a minority – who have successfully used their voting power to achieve their minority goals - plus the Prohibition Amendment tactics – bringing all sides together - is a straight path for us to success that cannot fail to enable us to create and complete one MAJORITY task. Read more: http://bit.ly/vK2pGI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
needs some polishing but I like it.
how do we get congress to work on it?
Stop wasting time on Wall Street and move the movement to DC.
Have you seen the movie DALLAS ?! Do you want to get rid of cunning people (J.R.)!? Vote petition on the Internet : http://wh.gov/jkl
nah, that stuff is way too old for any of us. Dallas was so 1980's.
And btw... divison troll!